... a miscellaneous hodgepodge of various thoughts, loosely held together by the fact that they're all emanating from a single mind. A lighthearted look at the world, a great place to waste a moment or two of your life.

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Rain and Wind

Got a little rain today, some wind, too. Fortunately, nothing particularly bad. Credit Isaac with the windy wetness; originally it was thought it would come a lot closer to our neck of the woods (um, where did "neck of the woods" come from? silly saying! but at least we have some woods around here, in particular a section that's pretty narrow, that could be a "neck of the woods"), but it decided to head a bit more to the west, and then some more, and eventually left us without any major storminess (there was a "regular" thunderstorm a few months back that had higher winds and more torrential rain than what we've seen thus far from Isaac).

While poking around looking at some weather-related sites, I came across this one, which shows the "dangerous areas" that may be impacted by a hurricane, and tends to show that the death toll may actually be higher away from the coast. Per the article, "more than 60 percent of hurricane-related deaths occur inland and away from the ocean" (per University Corporation for Atmospheric Research). Not to belittle their research, but consider: when a hurricane comes ashore, many residents don't stick around. Thus, the population density is higher away from the shore than it was before. In other words, there are fewer people to die near the shore when a hurricane hits, and more available death counts further inland.

However, what really struck me was this quote:

"Another strange result is that areas with more men may be more vulnerable; for unclear reasons, 71 percent of hurricane-related flooding victims are male, according to the release."

Really? "Unclear reasons"? Think about it; I'll offer two reasons, off the top of my head:

Men are stupider than women about this sort of thing ("oh, no problem, I can make it across this flooded street...").

Men are more likely than women when it comes to, you know, doing stupid things ("hey, watch me - I'm going out in the hurricane to swim!").

Both reasons above would tend to lead to a higher percentage of male victims than female during storms. (There's also the chivalrous possibility, of men wanting to rescue and protect women, but I'm betting the two reasons listed above are plenty.)

Ah, rain, wind... hopefully we'll still at least have a yard when all this is over.